A hole the three burglars had burned
into a vault door was almost complete, nearly big enough for Sean D. Murphy to wiggle through.

On the other side were millions of dollars in cash awaiting transfer at the Brink’s warehouse in
South Linden. After months of planning, it was within reach, and Murphy, a veteran criminal from
Massachusetts, couldn’t wait to get his hands on it.

Suddenly, smoke billowed from the hole. Their cutting torch had set the cash on fire. The
burglars grabbed extinguishers and sprayed into the hole. Smoke filled the air as they snaked a
hose through the opening and turned on the water.

Robert Doucette, the least-experienced of the three, began vomiting in a bucket. Murphy, the
mastermind, was frantic. His carefully constructed plan to get rich was about to go up in
flames.

In January 2009, three East Coast burglars known as the Lynn Breakers hit the warehouse near the
state fairgrounds and stole almost $2.5 million. Federal-court testimony and documents show in
detail how the crime unfolded:

Murphy, Doucette and Joseph M. Morgan had arrived at the Brink’s building after 8 p.m. on Jan.
17. They parked a box truck at a loading dock on a nearby property and hopped inside the back to
change clothes.

They put on light-colored outfits and then one-piece black jumpsuits. Rubber galoshes over their
shoes would prevent recognizable footprints. The idea, Doucette testified later, was that “if we
had to run, we could take off our black clothes and galoshes” and avoid identification as the
burglars.

To enter the Brink’s property, Murphy cut a hole in the metal fence around the building. Once
inside, they hoisted scaffolding onto a large storage container next to the building, smashed a
surveillance camera with a pry bar and climbed to the roof.

Doucette went to a railroad bridge about 70 yards away to act as lookout while Morgan and Murphy
set up a cellphone jammer to disengage the alarm system and cut the telephone wires.

An hour later, all three were huddling on the railroad bridge. They waited 45 minutes to make
sure the jammer had worked. When no alarms went off and no police arrived, Morgan and Murphy went
back to the building and used a cutting torch to slice at least four holes in the roof.

“The building had been ‘Murphed,’ ” Doucette said during the trial.

In December 2008, fellow crook David Nassor had driven 18 hours from Boston to Memphis to pick
up the cellphone jammer, which had been shipped from the United Kingdom to a Marriott in
Memphis.

The jammers are illegal in the United States, and East Coast postal workers are on the lookout
for shipments. So Murphy had his shipped to Tennessee.

Next, Murphy sent Nassor to Columbus to check out the Brink’s warehouse. During a 14-hour
stakeout, he learned what time the workers left on Saturday night and when they returned on Sunday
morning.

Doucette stood watch on the bridge as Morgan and Murphy dropped through the holes and worked
their way down two stories to the warehouse floor. Doucette then joined them.

They surveyed the garage area. A Brink’s truck was blocking the overhead door. Morgan used a
forklift to push the truck out of the way and then drove their box truck, cloaked in an RV cover to
shield its identity from video cameras, into the warehouse.

They unloaded their equipment: a fan, oxygen tanks, large plastic bags, lighting, a drill, a
generator and magnesium thermal rods.

Murphy and Morgan used the thermal rods like torches to burn a hole in the vault door big enough
for the slender Murphy to wiggle through. Doucette, meanwhile, smashed the Brink’s video system so
no recordings of their visit would exist.

The hole in the vault was nearly large enough to climb through when the cutting rods set the
cash inside on fire. The burglars’ attempts to squelch the flames were futile, so Murphy decided
they would have to take what they could get.

He squeezed his upper body through the hole and grabbed as much cash — wet, burned and otherwise
— as he could reach.

Morgan used the forklift to transfer skids of coins from the coin room into the truck. Then they
loaded up the cash and tools, shed their jumpsuits and masks and drove off.

About 30 minutes later, at 9 a.m., Brink’s employees showed up for work but couldn’t open the
warehouse doors.

“They assumed they were frozen shut,” testified Glen Blankenship, the warehouse operations
supervisor at the time.

Finally, they forced a door open. Smoke billowed out. A truck and equipment were parked askew.
Holes gaped in ceilings.

The control room’s monitors, shotguns, DVRs and other equipment were gone or destroyed. Epoxy
had been used to glue shut doors that led to the outside.

Clumps of cash were smoldering on the floor of the vault room.

The burglars drove to a Pennsylvania storage unit that Murphy had rented and unloaded their
tools and the stolen coins. They left with the bills.

“It was wet, smelly, and a lot of it was burned,” Doucette testified. “We put some Febreze in
the trash bags to try to eliminate some of the odor.”

They arrived at Doucette’s house in Lynn, outside Boston, on Sunday night and started counting
the money.

They washed the money in his washing machine and dried it in the dryer.

Nassor’s share was 5 percent off the top. Of the rest, 50 percent was to go to Murphy, 30
percent to Morgan and 20 percent to Doucette.

Murphy “was in charge of the whole thing, so he got a larger share,” Doucette testified.

The next day, Morgan and Nassor washed the truck inside and out and returned it to the rental
center in Newmarket, N.H.

Columbus investigators thought at first that the break-in was an inside job or involved local
criminals. That was part of the plan.

Before the heist, Murphy had gone to a homeless shelter near the warehouse bearing gifts of
drinks and cigarettes. He collected the used butts and left some at the warehouse. “He wanted to
leave some DNA at the crime scene that belonged to other people so cops would think it was local
people,” Doucette said.

But investigators soon realized that the details of the Brink’s crime resembled those of another
— the theft of $2 million in precious metals and jewelry from the E.A. Dion jewelry company in
Attleboro, Pa.

And at least one defendant in the jewelry burglary was talking: Nassor. He was arrested on March
14, 2009, after investigators found some of the loot from the Dion burglary at his home in
Petersham, Mass. He told investigators that Murphy had sent him to case the Brink’s warehouse in
Columbus.

Murphy had been arrested less than a week after the Brink’s burglary and charged as the
mastermind in the Dion heist.

In both the Brink’s and Dion cases, burglars cut holes in the roof to enter and used similar
techniques to defeat security systems. FBI agents in Columbus and Boston, as well as Columbus
police detectives, were working the case with the assistance of state and local law-enforcement
agencies in Massachusetts.

Investigators determined that the burglars had taken $332,350 in $1 coins, $63,940 in
half-dollar coins and less than $2 million in bills.

With Murphy in jail, Doucette and Morgan moved the contents of the Pennsylvania storage unit to
another in New Hampshire. Later, they took some items back to Lynn, destroyed others and threw some
into the ocean.

From jail, Murphy began writing to Doucette. “Try to get my China to the kid,” the first letter
said. He told Doucette to get the “super-crispy chicken” from KFC, saying “I want a combination
meal.”

China referred to the coins, Doucette testified. Because the boxes of coins were stacked
tall and wide, the burglars called them the Great Wall of China.

Super-crispy chicken was the cash that had burned during the heist.

On April 8, 2009, investigators arrested Morgan for the Brink’s burglary.

By late spring 2009, investigators had talked to Doucette, and he’d spilled the story, including
where some of the money was. In June, he guided them to the New Hampshire storage unit.

“They opened it and found everything,” Doucette testified.

Piecing together the evidence in the case took two years. Charges in the Dion case are still
pending in Fall River Superior Court in Massachusetts.

In Columbus, Doucette and Morgan pleaded guilty in April to conspiracy and transporting stolen
merchandise and money across state lines. Morgan, who refused to help investigators convict Murphy,
was sentenced to four years and seven months in federal prison.

Doucette testified against Murphy and was sentenced to two years and three months in prison.

Murphy represented himself at trial and argued that the government had no direct evidence
linking him to the crime. But jurors convicted him of conspiracy to transport stolen goods,
interstate transport of stolen goods and two counts of traveling in interstate commerce with intent
to promote unlawful activity. He awaits sentencing.

About $1 million of the stolen money has not been found.

Brink’s has significantly bolstered its security at the South Linden warehouse, company official
Blankenship testified at Murphy’s trial.